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Marge planted a fist on her hip.“And how would you have done that?”

Gran shrugged.“I would have hired you as my maid or something, and Tex as the chauffeur. That way you could have lived in a little room over the garage. Shared the wealth.”

Marge pressed her lips together and made a strangled sound at the back of her throat. Living above the garage and working as her own mother’s maid didn’t seem to appeal to her all that much.

“Dad is a doctor, not a chauffeur, Gran,” Odelia pointed out. “And Mom is a librarian, not a maid.”

“Who cares? The Goldsmiths got money to burn. He wouldn’t have had to do any chauffeuring. Just pretend to go through the motions. Maybe wash a limo from time to time. Wear one of them snazzy peaked caps. Just saying. This family missed a great opportunity.”

“We didn’t miss anything,” said Marge. “All we missed was you going off and showing your true colors.”

Brutus had returned from his business in the bushes, and was stalking across the lawn with the air of a cat whose bowel movements have just proved a source of great enjoyment. If he’d been a human male he’d have carried a newspaper under his arm, folded to the sports section. When he caught sight of the flea party in progress on the lawn, the smile of contentment faded and he started backtracking in the direction of the bushes again.

Marge’s eagle eyes had spotted the big, black cat, though. “Oh, Brutus, there you are. Come over here a minute, will you? We need to check you for fleas.”

“I ain’t got no fleas,” he said promptly. “No, ma’am. I’m officially flea-free.”

Marge smiled indulgently.“Be that as it may, you still need checking out. Now come over here and I’ll give you your checkup.”

“Does that mean you’re done with me?” asked Harriet with a note of disappointment in her voice. Harriet likes being pampered and groomed. The more pampering the better.

“Yup. All done,” said Marge.

“Oh,” said Harriet, and reluctantly relinquished her spot to her beau Brutus.

“You know?” said Dooley as he directed a fishy look at a floating flea. “I’m not so sure this is an entirely humane way to treat these animals, Max.”

“What animals?” I asked as Odelia lifted my tail and checked my rear end.

“Well, we’re all God’s creatures, Max, so maybe all this poisoning and waterboarding and generally slaughtering these poor fleas isn’t the way to go is what I mean to say.”

We all stared at the cat. Even Grandma momentarily paused her combing efforts.“You’re nuts,” was her opinion. “I’ve got a nut for a cat.”

Odelia, however, seemed prepared to give Dooley the benefit of the doubt.“I thought you didn’t like fleas, Dooley? You couldn’t wait to get rid of them?”

“Oh, I do. Hate the little parasites, I mean. And I do want to get rid of them. But maybe we should go about this the humane way. Treat them with kindness. Humanely.”

“Whatever,” said Harriet with a flick of her tail as she licked those last few droplets of water from her shiny white fur. “As long as they’re gone, it’s fine by me.” She then gave me a censorious look. “So have you found your Patient Zero yet, Max?”

I looked up, distracted by Odelia dragging her comb across my sensitive belly.“Huh?”

“Patient Zero,” Harriet repeated impatiently. “I thought you and Dooley were trying to track down the cat who got us into this mess and deal with him or her properly?”

“Yeah,” I said vaguely. “We’re, um, working on it.”

“Well, work faster,” she said. “I don’t want to go through this ordeal again.”

“Are you really tracking down Patient Zero, Max?” asked Marge.

“Sure, sure,” I said. Actually I’d totally forgotten about this elusive Patient Zero. Like Harriet said, as long as the fleas were gone, who cared about Patient Zero, let alone patients one or two or three or whatever? “We’re looking into it, aren’t we, Dooley?”

But Dooley was still thinking about the fate of those poor fleas.“I mean, if the Humane Society cares so much about horses and the way they’re treated in all those Hollywood movies, shouldn’t they look into fleas, too? We’re all God’s creatures, right?”

Brutus emitted a groan.“Fleas aren’t creatures, Dooley. Fleas are a pest. And pests should be terminated. End of discussion.”

“Fleas deserve our consideration, Brutus,” said Dooley with a pained look as he watched a flea float lifelessly in the tub. “Have you ever stopped to consider that this flea right here has a mother and a father who care about him or her? And brothers and sisters?”

“Lots and lots of brothers and sisters,” said Odelia with a slight grin. “Millions of them. Probably billions or even trillions.”

“We still owe it to them to treat them with kindness and respect,” Dooley insisted.

Odelia held up her comb.“This is being kind, Dooley. This is being respectful.”

“Kind and respectful,” Gran scoffed. “They’re not being kind when they suck your blood, are they? So why should we be kind to them?”

“Kill ‘em all is what I say,” said Brutus, with a decisive motion of his paw. “Carpet bomb the suckers to oblivion.”